Quick Question

[Hotrod]

Does anyone here think that aliens may have planted the idea of a supreme power inorder to help keep us in check. Think about it they stop in and plant the idea that a super power is watching are every move and the only way to survive is to play nice.

Discuss........

[Spider]

Fast answer , damned if I know ;D

[Bronx33]

Next question

[Hotrod]

Next question

What is the subject to deep. Here you take this question instead. If a tree fall in the forest do you feel a pain in your subconsious?

[Hotrod]

Fast answer , damned if I know ;D

Well you also drive a Ford so you've got a build in excuse :)

[Bronx33]

Next question

[Hotrod]

Next question

LOL damn it knock that **** off Im bored

[defenseman]

Superpower watching us? Vincente Fox? Cuba? Russia?....WTF? ....explain..dman

[Hotrod]

Well those of us who are paying attention already know that China has already started a war with us. The have started the war on the economic front. We just have yet to wake up although the powers that be already are fully aware of the fact the dollar is in great danger and are already redistributing their personal wealth into the Euro and Asian markets.

[defenseman]

Not a war , persay. Though, GW and the rest of the house better dig their heals in soon. The chinese are posturing for the "future" and if we let them, they can do some damage without firing a shot...dman

[bronco_diesel]

Does anyone here think that aliens may have planted the idea of a supreme power inorder to help keep us in check. Think about it they stop in and plant the idea that a super power is watching are every move and the only way to survive is to play nice.

Discuss........

no.

[Hotrod]

Not a war , persay. Though, GW and the rest of the house better dig their heals in soon. The chinese are posturing for the "future" and if we let them, they can do some damage without firing a shot...dman

pegging the yen was an act of war no??? How about piggy backing goods thru S America??? China makes greassy Al of the fade look like a saint.

[Hotrod]

no.

do you have a link ;)

[defenseman]

As I said before, if not handled correctly, and if they allowed to continue such practices they will hurt us economically, I have no doubt. time to dig our heals in, and PUSH the other way...dman

[W*GS]

Well those of us who are paying attention already know that China has already started a war with us. The have started the war on the economic front. We just have yet to wake up although the powers that be already are fully aware of the fact the dollar is in great danger and are already redistributing their personal wealth into the Euro and Asian markets.

Sigh.

What do you make of the following, then:

Money to burn
Apr 20th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Why oil exporters' enormous surpluses may last longer this time

Plenty of Americans blame unfair competition from Asia, and especially China, for their country's gigantic current-account deficit. Yet the group of countries with the world's biggest current-account surpluses is no longer emerging Asia, but exporters of oil. As the price of their chief resource has climbed—this week it hit a new nominal record price of more than $70 a barrel—these economies have enjoyed a huge windfall. From an American point of view, the rise in oil prices has explained half of the widening of the current-account deficit since 2003, a bigger share than that accounted for by China.

A timely chapter in the International Monetary Fund's latest World Economic Outlook, published this week, explores the implications of these gushing petrodollars for the world's current-account imbalances. Thanks to higher prices and increased production, the revenues of oil exporters—members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), plus Russia and Norway and a few others—reached almost $800 billion in 2005. Adjusted for inflation, this beats the previous peak in 1980; and in the past three years real oil revenues have risen by almost twice as much as in 1973-76 or 1978-81. In relation to world GDP, however, revenues have increased by only a little more than during those earlier price shocks.

The oil exporters' current-account surpluses reached almost $400 billion last year, more than four times the total for 2002, and are forecast to rise to $480 billion in 2006. The combined surpluses of China and other emerging Asian economies were only $240 billion last year. Oil exporters' surpluses are also much bigger relative to the size of their economies, averaging 18% of GDP last year, twice as much as at the previous peak in 1980, and much more than China's surplus of 7% of GDP.

http://www.economist.com/images/20060422/CFN592.gif

Petrodollars can be recycled to oil-importing economies in one of two ways. Either oil exporters can import more goods and services, or they can invest their windfalls in global capital markets, thereby financing the current-account deficits of America and other oil importers. Whether the exporters spend or save their revenues determines the path of global imbalances, including America's vast deficit.

After previous increases in oil prices, current-account imbalances have tended to adjust fairly swiftly, through three main channels. First, higher oil prices reduced real incomes and profits in importing countries, squeezing domestic spending and hence imports of both oil and other goods. Second, as oil prices pushed up inflation, central banks raised interest rates, which further slowed domestic demand and so trimmed the external deficit. And third, importers' real exchange rates fell, helping to bring their current accounts back towards balance. Conversely, exporters' surpluses were reduced by stronger domestic demand (and hence imports) and rising real exchange rates.


The IMF suggests that this time may be different, with the oil producers' surpluses persisting for longer than in the past. Oil exporters have spent a smaller share of their latest windfall on imports of goods and services than during previous oil shocks. Since 2002 they have spent barely half of their extra revenues, compared with three-quarters in the 1970s. Past windfalls typically encouraged wasteful budgetary blow-outs, leaving government finances in trouble once oil prices fell back. This time governments are being more cautious, even though the futures markets expect oil prices to stay high.

America gains little, in terms of its current-account balance, even from the imports that oil exporters do buy. It now accounts for only 8% of OPEC countries' total imports; the European Union has 32%. So even if the exporters spent all their extra revenue, America's current-account deficit would increase as oil prices rise. This partly explains why in recent years the EU's trade balance with the oil exporters has barely changed even as America's deficit has grown sharply.

Dear oil, cheap money

A second difference from previous oil shocks is that the impact on inflation has been surprisingly mild, thanks to the increased credibility of central banks as well as the downward pressure on prices exerted by competition from China and elsewhere. As a result, central banks have not needed to raise short-term rates sharply, so domestic demand, notably in America, has continued to grow more strongly than in the past and oil importers' current-account deficits remain large.

A third factor delaying the adjustment to external imbalances is that the oil producers are investing a large chunk of their windfall in global bond markets. In the 1970s and early 1980s, their surpluses were largely deposited in banks in America and Europe, which then lent the money to oil-importing developing countries (sowing the seeds of the 1981-82 Latin American debt crisis). This time, most of the money has gone into bonds, as well as equities, property and hedge funds.

A lot of it has ended up, via intermediaries in London, in America's bond market. This has reduced yields, supported American house prices and hence consumer spending, and so helped to sustain the country's external deficit. The IMF reckons that the oil exporters have shaved one-third of a percentage point off American bond yields.

America's deficit loomed large well before oil prices began their climb. But to the extent that dearer energy has exacerbated that deficit, it has added to the risk of a sudden disorderly adjustment. It is commonly argued that because oil is traded in dollars, rising oil prices automatically increase the demand for greenbacks. But that is only a temporary effect. So far, the oil exporters seem happy to pile up their petrodollars in American Treasury bonds. But for how long? Speculation has grown over the past month that the Gulf states may decide to diversify their foreign assets, after American politicians forced Dubai's DP World to abandon its takeover of the running of six American ports. Debtors cannot afford to treat their creditors so rudely.

Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

We just have yet to wake up although the powers that be already are fully aware of the fact the dollar is in great danger and are already redistributing their personal wealth into the Euro and Asian markets.

Now you're beginning to get the picture.

Funny, when some of us pointed this out a while ago, we were denounced as rotten patriots and "Bush bashers." ;)

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Does anyone here think that aliens may have planted the idea of a supreme power inorder to help keep us in check. Think about it they stop in and plant the idea that a super power is watching are every move and the only way to survive is to play nice.

Discuss........

Don't you blaspheme in here, boy! ;)

On the real, this sort of thing would make the aliens themselves the supreme power, wouldn't it?

Why not just show themselves to us?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Well those of us who are paying attention already know that China has already started a war with us. The have started the war on the economic front. We just have yet to wake up although the powers that be already are fully aware of the fact the dollar is in great danger and are already redistributing their personal wealth into the Euro and Asian markets.

This article addresses your observations and concerns in more detail:

Greenback's long downward spiral

Mike Whitney

Why is George Bush destroying the dollar?

Or is it Bush? Maybe, it is the Federal Reserve, the privately owned group of 12 central banks that prints our money and sets the policy?

A UK Telegraph article on Tuesday "Dollar Drops as great Sell-Off Looms" explains the current dilemma. The dollar is falling against the euro and the Asian currencies while gold and energy prices continue to skyrocket. "Greenback liquidation comes amid growing concerns that global central banks and Middle East oil funds are quietly paring back their holdings of US bonds." David Bloom, a currency expert at HSBC, said the dollar was vulnerable to a steep sell-off as investors begin to refocus on America's yawning current account deficit, now 7% of GDP". (UK Telegraph)

Just to add some perspective to this topic; Argentina's economy collapsed when its trade deficit reached 4% of GDP. The US deficit is at an unprecedented level.

Normally, we could say that these are the predictable effects of market forces, but that's not the case here. After all, we know that Bush insisted that the lavish tax cuts be made permanent even though it was understood that such action would undercut the dollar. So, what is going on here; why does Bush want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg?

There are two ways to weaken the currency; either print more money which dilutes the supply, or create new debt which lowers the value.

Bush has done both simultaneously and with such gusto that it's a wonder the dollar hasn't crashed already. He's expanded government spending by 35% and produced humongous $450 billion per year tax cuts. Add this to the projected costs of a $2 trillion war and the dollar was bound to get hammered.

At the same time Bush has been spending us into oblivion, the Federal Reserve has kept the printing presses humming along at full-throttle doubling the money supply in the last decade. Almost half of all greenbacks are now located outside the country, which means that if the dollar becomes less attractive to investors those greenbacks will come flooding back to America and plunge the country into recession.

Regardless of one's political leanings, there is an obvious and demonstrable attempt to savage the currency by the political and banking establishment.

Why?

The real force behind Bush's actions is the Federal Reserve. No one has any illusion that our paper-mache president, who even boasts about not reading the newspapers, is making complex policy decisions about geopolitics and finance. As a privately owned institution, the Fed has its own agenda which runs contrary to the interests of the American people. Many people fail to realize that it was Greenspan who cooked up the massive increases in Social Security in 1983 to help Reagan reduce the soaring interest rates that were caused by his tax cuts for the wealthy. Ever since then, Social Security payments have gone directly into the general fund; paying for roads, social programs and war. This was the Fed's clever way of creating a flat tax directed exclusively at the poor and middle class.

The Federal Reserve has engineered many similar coups, the most impressive being the huge stock market bubble of the late 1990s. Greenspan kept the cheap money flowing into the Wall Street Casino (and refused to even increase marginal rates on stock purchases) while PE's skyrocketed and the bubble expanded to Hindenburg-proportions.

Following the explosion, which left tens of thousands of Americans stripped of their retirement and savings, Greenspan breezily noted that it is not the task of the Fed to stop bubbles.

Really? The European Central Bank (ECB) takes an entirely different tack intervening whenever it is clearly in the public interest. Greenspan's recalcitrance has nothing to do with principle; he was simply acting on behalf of constituents in the investment community.

Currently, the Fed has created the largest equity bubble of all time; the $9 trillion housing bubble, slapped together over the last 3 years by lowering rates to an unbelievable 1.5% (at one point) and facilitated through shabby lending practices. As rates continue to rise to satisfy America's need for $2 billion cash inflows from foreign lenders every day, the carnage from the housing-bomb is bound to be extensive and agonizing.

The Federal Reserve has always served the singular interests of the ruling class, the only difference now is that the present clash is designed to drive the wooden-stake into the heart of the middle class and create a permanent American oligarchy.

Bush has purposely generated another $3 trillion in debt ensuring that the dollar will fall mightily and working class people be left with a trifling of their life savings.

6 months ago, the Federal Reserve, anticipating the day when the foreign inflows would dry up, eliminated the M-3, their public record of foreign purchases of dollars and securities. It all sounds very abstract, but what it means is that we no longer have any way of knowing how quickly foreign banks are dumping their greenbacks. This means that the American people will be left holding the bag once again; stuck with an inflationary dollar while foreign investors bail out.

The Federal Reserve gave Bush the go-ahead on his "war of choice" just as they cheerily endorsed the budget-busting tax cuts. They've doubled the money supply and done everything in their power to shift middle class wealth to corporate kingpins and American plutocrats.

Still, this doesn't explain why they appear to be intentionally savaging the dollar?

Here's the key: We are not a "capitalistic" system or a "free market" system, that's all just philosophical mumbo-jumbo. In practical terms, we are a "Dollar system" and the greenback must continue to dominate the world oil trade or the Federal Reserve, the IMF, the World Bank and all the privately owned global institutions will crash and burn. That's not their plan; their plan is to perpetuate this debt-pyramid into infinity; integrating dissident states into an expanding and predatory neoliberal network.

The face value of the dollar doesn't matter to the men who print the money. The actual value is constantly manipulated to shift wealth from one class to another. (via bubbles and inflation) What really matters is who controls the system and the means whereby others are coerced to participate. In the last decade the amount of dollars stockpiled in foreign banks has gone from 53% to nearly 70%; this is a monopoly that the US intends to defend by every means possible. To maintain this monopoly, the Federal Reserve has linked arms with the oil industry (and the US military) in its effort to control the world oil market. This has become an "existential" issue for the corporate elites who run American foreign policy. If the dollar is not supported by access to the world's dwindling oil supplies, then there is no incentive for foreign banks to accumulate the anemic dollar. (Oil is sold exclusively in US greenbacks)

By this standard, we can see that Bush's fictitious war on terror is really just a smokescreen for a global resource war that will decide which economic system prevails.

Will it be the dollar system, with its wars and gulags spread across the planet? Or will some other system emerge, some non-ideological incarnation of socialism that redistributes wealth according to people's needs like we see in Venezuela?

The future of the dollar may be decided sooner than any of us had imagined. Iran's Mehr News Agency announced that the long-awaited Iran Oil Bourse (OIB) will open sometime next week on Kish Island challenging head-on America's monopoly on the sale of oil in dollars. Iran's plan is a direct attack on the greenback as the world's "reserve currency". The US must preserve that advantage because it allows it to maintain massive deficits as well as a national debt of $8.4 trillion without fear of economic collapse or hyper-inflation. The opening of the bourse guarantees that central banks around the world will convert some of their reserves into euros precipitating a sharp decline in the dollar's value.

This may be the most serious threat the dollar has ever faced. The fundamental economic law of "supply and demand" ensures that the bourse means hard times for the greenback. This explains why the Bush administration is cobbling together a feeble coalition of European allies (England, France and Germany) to push a resolution through the Security Council expressing their "serious concern" about Iran's alleged nuclear programs.

Washington is looking for international cover to conceal its battle-plans. The hawkish members of the administration want to preempt the opening of the bourse with a unilateral attack (nuclear?) on Iranian facilities.

Even if Washington succeeds in stopping Iran's plans to compete in the oil market, it's still a bumpy road ahead for the greenback. The dollar is under growing pressure from overspending and mismanagement. The prospect of diminishing foreign inflows and a fragile housing market are telltale signs of an inflationary cycle.

America is now facing a slow-motion meltdown that could escalate into a widespread run on the dollar. Attacking Iran will only aggravate the situation and push tenuous states towards new alliances. (China, India, Venezuela and Russia have already expressed support for the new bourse) Military action will do nothing to relieve America's enormous account imbalances or lesson the vulnerability of the ailing greenback.

The problems facing the dollar are purely systemic. The privately owned central banks in the Federal Reserve cannot be trusted to decide monetary policy any more than the oil giants can be trusted to decide foreign policy. When the public interest is excluded from policy-making, catastrophe is inevitable.

Expect the greenback to follow a long-downward spiral.

[Spider]

Well you also drive a Ford so you've got a build in excuse :)
thats it ......... i have had it , I am introducing you to my sister .Enough is enough dont try and talk your way out of it .............

[BroncoBuff]

Does anyone here think that aliens may have planted the idea of a supreme power inorder to help keep us in check. Think about it they stop in and plant the idea that a super power is watching are every move and the only way to survive is to play nice.

Discuss........

For a long time I've kicked around in my head a philosophy that perhaps the human belief in a God/Supreme Being is a Darwinistic genetic mutation ... like chameleons changing color, trap-door spiders catching prey, or West African tree toads spontaneously changing gender when males of the species are too few in number.

Our species' pre-disposition to believe in an all-powerful third party imposition of a "moral code" has just so happened to permit our species to flourish, by mandating cooperation betwen us.

The nerds - the "smart" ones - never would've stayed alive long enough to build fires/invent wheels/pass on their genes if the knuckle-draggers of the group were free to kill them off like wild animals. This entire mutation of human intellect - the warped freak-of-nature we call the human brain - was only possible because the knuckle draggers feared "going to hell" if they killed/shunned the nerds.

You can laugh .... but nature is chocked full - absolutely packed to the gills with astonishing, unthinkable genetic mutations - size, color, speed, shape, length, width, etc.... why not a brain lobe that permits belief in an outside all-powerful moral law-giver .... one whose laws just so happens to advance the species?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Our species' pre-disposition to believe in an all-powerful third party imposition of a "moral code" has just so happened to permit our species to flourish, by mandating cooperation betwen us.

Just as often, it seems, these "moral codes" (or collective interpretations thereof) mandate conflict (i.e., intolerance, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, nationalism, imperialism, and warfare) between us rather than cooperation.

The nerds - the "smart" ones - never would've stayed alive long enough to build fires/invent wheels/pass on their genes if the knuckle-draggers of the group were free to kill them off like wild animals. This entire mutation of human intellect - the warped freak-of-nature we call the human brain - was only possible because the knuckle draggers feared "going to hell" if they killed/shunned the nerds.

Hmmmm....knuckle-draggers killing off the smart ones....sounds like Bush's America. ;)

On the serious side, I, for one, don't buy into the notion that the fear of going to hell (or any other threat of punishment) is the ultimate determining factor in human morality - at least not for mature and emotionally/mentally healthy human beings, anyway.

To me, empathy, e.g., the golden rule, is the ultimate expression of human moral development. That is, I don't refrain from hurting you because I'm afraid of getting caught or because I'm afraid of being punished: I refrain from hurting you because I know I don't like to be hurt and I assume you are just like me in this respect.

Also, in your "nerds vs. knuckle-draggers" scenario, enlightened self-interest (vs. threat of punishment) may have also had a role in shaping the behavior of the knuckle-draggers. That is, the guy who knows how to make fire or to fashion a bow is useful - if not indispensable - to us; we don't want to whack him. :)

[mosca]

Does anyone here think that aliens may have planted the idea of a supreme power inorder to help keep us in check. Think about it they stop in and plant the idea that a super power is watching are every move and the only way to survive is to play nice.

Discuss........
if there are aliens and they have visited here before, particularly in the earlier ages of mankind's history, i believe that they are the "supreme power" that most religions deify. i don't know that they planted the moral code of acting "nice"...that seems to me to be more or less a human invention, but you could be right in that perhaps it has been derived from the aliens/gods. if the aliens are truly a higher power, then it makes sense that they've figured out a "higher" moral code for living beings to live their lives by. pretty complex issue.

[Hotrod]

if there are aliens and they have visited here before, particularly in the earlier ages of mankind's history, i believe that they are the "supreme power" that most religions deify. i don't know that they planted the moral code of acting "nice"...that seems to me to be more or less a human invention, but you could be right in that perhaps it has been derived from the aliens/gods. if the aliens are truly a higher power, then it makes sense that they've figured out a "higher" moral code for living beings to live their lives by. pretty complex issue.

Although I dont actually believe this to be true. It does have an "air" of potential. They could have been monitoring us from the beginning. Maybe they have seen evolution take place on other planets and thru early intervention set the stage for us to grow as a spieces.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Does anyone here think that aliens may have planted the idea of a supreme power inorder to help keep us in check. Think about it they stop in and plant the idea that a super power is watching are every move and the only way to survive is to play nice.

Discuss........

Very possible. I also see some members here returning as cockroaches and dung rollers in their next lives.

[noneubizwax]

The person who started this thread is out there. Hes needs to seek some mental health help quick.

[Hotrod]

The person who started this thread is out there. Hes needs to seek some mental health help quick.

This from the guy who thinks Lelie is better the Rod and Walker Ha!

[Spider]

This from the guy who thinks Lelie is better the Rod and Walker Ha!
Did he realy say that ? Hilarious! if he did I am so glad he in on the right and with Bush ......